A friend of mine did a great job taking pictures of our family for our Christmas card this year, but our kids would hardly look at the camera, let alone smile! I said, "I just want one good picture with everyone smiling at the camera." John replies, "that's pretty much impossible with our kids." I disagree, but next year maybe I'll have to have someone doing a little song and a dance behind the photographer.
Here's the results of me later trying to get a picture of just the kids before the ward Halloween party. I mean, that would be Christmas party. We have one child who likes to pose for the camera, one who smiles easily but not necessarily when being held by a sibling, and one child who has looked toward a camera about twice in his little lifetime. Still, not impossible, I say.
(Cracker - bad idea, but at least it got him to sit).

No, look at me when you say cheese.

Katelyn wants what he has.

Making progress - maybe I can edit out the cracker?

And we're done with picture time for today.

Baby's First Christmas

For Katelyn's first Christmas, she got bronchiolitis, roseola (high fever, rash), and two new teeth breaking through.

Oh yeah, and Santa brought her a bath toy set, and a couple other things. Poor girl! It was a rough week for her.

Oh, Come Let Us Adore Him

A few years ago, my brother gave each of us (my 4 sisters and I) a little nativity (the wooden one below), and said he wanted to start a tradition where each year we get a new nativity set. We take turns, so when it is our year to buy, we find a nativity to buy for each of our siblings as part of the giving for that year. I now have 8 from this tradition, so it's turned into a little collection.

Here are 6 of them:

And 2 more - a cookie cutter set, and one with pieces the kids can take off and put back on.

And I have a few other nativities, too, though I don't know where I would put them all without our big mantel. Here's our living room, with some of my small nativities, and my Willow Tree set that I love.

(No nativies, but here's our living room before I rearranged the whole room to make a less-direct-crawling-path-to-the-tree).*

Some of my small one's on the mantel (and just out of my boy's reach).

This one is from my Nana. I love it because it reminds me of her house at Christmas time. So fun to see her decorations and one of my favorite places to be at Christmas (or anytime)!

I also really like this one Great-Grandma Wilson sent me last year.

And below, one Grandma Knippers got for the kids to play with. It has been well played with, and only a few wiseman hands and a donkey ear couldn't take the roughness.

Last but not least, a moose nativity ornament John got me one year.

This is not all - Olivia has one on her dresser that I was going to give to Goodwill before she found it, and a few other small ones not pictured. And I haven't even bought any, besides the one I got for everyone on my turn.

*I took some pictures of our house a while ago (October, as you can see) that I was going to post for some of you far away (like my sisters who claim they'll make it up here sometime) so you can see all the grandeur of our little rental (including the ugliest kitchen in America). So maybe I'll still get around to that sometime.

But for now, Merry Christmas!

We're pretty much snowed-in here (about 8 inches on our lawn, and in Seattle, "what's a snowplow?"), so maybe I'll post more soon. Or maybe I'll wrap presents, watch the snow fall, and make more cookies instead!

Sisters

Just because I love this picture.

I probably wouldn't have allowed my first baby to be carried like this (first babies are usually a little over-protected), but its fun having siblings! Way more entertainment than Mom and Dad can bring.

Braving Santa's lap

Santa came to the ward party

Santa has something in his teeth.

Beat up by the concrete.

She got a huge blood blister under her lip, and I think it made her whole face look different. But it healed quickly. While watching John put up Christmas lights, she tripped over a tree branch and hit the edge of the sidewalk - hard enough that I heard her hit from inside my living room. A big "smack" followed by screaming/crying. Not a fun sound to hear. She gets scared at the sight of blood, and can be very dramatic even for small injuries, so she was pretty upset with this one.

Drooling on Dad's head

Let it Snow

Who needs a hill?

Just before Jackson burst into tears because he was frozen.

Eating snow mixed with pieces of tree.

Sunday was a snowy day, and today school started 2 hours later due to snowy roads. (Seattle usually doesn't get much snow, so they're not really equipped for plowing all the roads, or at least not all the side roads).

My Thanksgiving "Moment"

Turkey project by me and Olivia. (She said she wanted me to make a turkey with her, but I couldn't help her, I had to make my own. Mine's just the same ol', same ol'. She had something different in mind).

We drove down to Portland to have Thanksgiving with John's family. In our van, it's much easier to travel with kids because I can go back and try to keep them entertained on a long ride. During the drive, I went back to sit by Katelyn and give her Cheerios. Olivia was singing Primary songs and Jackson was sleeping.
These are some of the words to the song she was singing:
"He is always near me, though I cannot see him there.
And because He loves me dearly, I am in His watchful care."

There's so much about those words and that song to be thankful for. Knowing He does love her dearly, and me dearly also. I'm so thankful that my kids can know that He loves and watches over them, that we have the knowledge of the gospel, that we can teach these things to our children, and for Primary and Primary songs that help them to learn of Him and feel Him near as they sing.
I also thought of how thankful I am for all those people surrounding me in the car.
I could here Jackson's soft snoring behind me, Olivia singing in her best 5-yr-old voice next to him, Katelyn next to me trying to eat her toes and babbling "ma-ma-ma-ma," and my best friend, best husband, and partner-through-it-all up in the driver's seat.
So much to be thankful for.
(That same attitude of gratitute wasn't as present late that night trying to get 3 kids to sleep away from their own beds, but that's another story . . . )

Christmas is coming!

This is from the December "Friend" magazine. We're going to try it here, and I just wanted to share in case anyone else wants to try it, too. It's a good way to get kids excited to read scriptures this month, because it's a count-down to Christmas! Plus, they get to color one in each time you read one - and hey, that's exciting. Here's the link.

Just another day at our house

We're almost out of diapers for Jackson, and decide instead of buying more, we'll see how he does if we tell him no more diapers. Peeing on the carpet doesn't bother him. (Although it does happen to bother his mom). He would just go, then say, "Mom, more pee came out." And keep playing. While playing with his trains, he peed right into the drawer under the train table (tips for cleaning urine-soaked wooden tracks)? After that and several other accidents, we got more diapers.

-

Olivia and Jackson climb into Kate's crib and are having a great time in there, until I hear, "Stop, Olivia! That breaks the bones in my head!" Whatever she did, it couldn't have been nice.

Jackson's two-week long runny nose is now a blue runny nose. Hmm, who could be responsible for leaving all the lids off the markers again?

Olivia's learning to read! She catches on fast, why didn't we do this earlier? Oh yeah, because every time I got out the "Teach Your Child to Read" book, she would say "I'm never reading again!" She likes "Bob Books" more.

Katelyn knows how to get away from a diaper change.

John's fixing eyeballs in the middle of the night. And I'm making pumpkin bread.

A Portrait of her Parents

(This is from just a few weeks after Katelyn was born).
Olivia: Look, Dad, I drew you and Mommy.
John: Am I the blue one? (I think he was trying to make me feel better).
Olivia: No, you're green.
John: Oh, is this when Katelyn was still in Mom's tummy?
Olivia: Nope.

Darn.

Happy Anniversary to us!

reception

engagement picture - do we look different?

Yesterday was our anniversary. We were planning on just getting the kids in bed early, getting some take-out food, and just doing a "home date" since it was a Monday night and we didn't want to ask anyone to babysit. But a very kind friend offered to watch them, then when we were going to cancel that day because Jackson's sick and didn't want to get her kids sick, she offered to come over to our house instead. We took her up on it, even though it meant she would be a witness to our messy family room (I've been letting some things slide, while I read about vampires lately). We just went out to dinner, but it was so nice to be able to go eat somewhere that didn't have kids meals and to remember how fun it is to be together somewhere other than home with toys, crayons, and 3 crazy little Knippers. Yeah, we haven't gone on many dates lately! We better work on that.
Here are a couple pictures of that most wonderful day 7 years ago. 7 years already?

Halloween's over, but . . .

Packing up Halloween costumes and decorations, I was talking with Olivia and Jackson about what they dressed up as in past years. I think Halloween is one of the few days of the year that we have the camera out, same day each year, so it was funny to see how much we changed from one year to the next. (In our last ward, we had an indoor Halloween party, so it was a good chance to get a picture of all of us with costumes. Now they have a trunk-or-treat in the dark so we didn't think about a family picture). As seen above, I've pretty much worn the same shirt for the last six Halloween's.

2008:

The only picture w/ me in it from this Halloween (photographer: Olivia). Darn, we didn't get the family this year! But the pumpkin shirt - still going strong.

2007: Pumpkin shirt wouldn't fit over my belly. It probably wouldn't have any made it over my face, either.

2006: At ward Halloween party in Milw.

2005: Donned a costume for Primary party, since I was in Primary. And probably too big for shirt again. Blame it on new baby again.

2004: John's going to be happy when he sees this picture I posted. He could use my dad's line, "I don't have to dress up, I already have my costume on." Don't worry, shirt was worn - top picture is from same year.

2003: New baby, new tired parents.

Yes, this IS why our Christmas card photo has rotated between the whole family one year, just the kids the next.

This is what I like to see at night:

But lately Jackson doesn't think he has to sleep! I don't know what's going on with him. A couple nights ago, at 3 in the morning, I heard a frantic, "Mommy, he's eating me!" He was running down the hall before I could even sit up in bed. And was up the rest of the night! A few times he dozed off, but as soon as I was falling back to sleep, he was awakened again by his bad dream.

He thought Bruce the Shark was going to come through his window.

The next night he kept wanting, "someone else that talks" to sleep in his room with him (i.e. stuffed animals don't count).

And last night he came out of his room over and over "needing" something. At 11:00, he let me know he could not sleep without the Little People sheep. So the Little People sheep found out for the first time what it's like to be needed. (Good thing it wasn't in the box of toys I just took to Goodwill).

After being up since 3 am, I didn't do much that day. Except take care of a few problems, like eyebrows plastered to the forehead with dried snot, stuff like that. (Baby eyebrows, not my eyebrows).

Prop 8

My cousin in California wrote this really good post about Prop 8, and I just wanted to pass it along here. As of right now, the results are still being tallied in CA.
Hope you don't mind, Chelsea!

Halloween

Trunk-or-treat the weekend before Halloween (the first round of candy).

Friday night as kids everywhere went after the candy, mom's everywhere took pictures for the blog. Okay, maybe not just for the blog. We didn't get any great Halloween pictures here, but we did get lots of candy, and what's more important, anyway?

We went really simple on costumes this year. I did spend about 10 minutes making Jackson a pirate costume, but when a friend offered a superman costume, he liked that idea better. Olivia wanted to wear dress-up stuff for a princess, and we just made a hat in another 10 minutes. But then she wanted to put on the bunny ears for trick-or-treating, instead. And Katelyn's wearing the bunny costume that was also Olivia's. I guess I should have put my 20 minutes into the snail costume I had wanted to make for her - she wouldn't have changed her mind on me! By next year, the idea won't work as well since she should be done scooting around on her belly by then.